Why Saying "You're Beautiful" Doesn't Work

They try to wash over our valid insecurities with “”you’re beautiful.”

“Oh, but you’re beautiful” - while we are confronted by every TV screen and movie theatre and advertisement and magazine page that indicates quite the contrary; you allow us to learn that we are ugly implicitly, and then explicitly reassure us with an empty “you’re beautiful.” It is EMPTY. And it is all the more cruel that we are degraded quietly, must learn to self-monitor and self-loathe in silence, that if we think about it, few to no people actually said to our faces “you’re too fat” or “your thighs are too big” or “your teeth are not straight.” When we think back in our lives, we are drowned in a sea of meaningless “you’re beautifuls;” from family, friends, ex- and current lovers, and our pain is salted by their sugared words. Can you blame us, then, when we say that these compliments all mean nothing? When we say that they do not count, are conditional, are said in moments of delusion or mercy, but soon the clarity of truth returns: we are imperfect, flawed; ugly. “Beautiful” carries no meaning except to shut us up.